5.  The applicant was born in 1964 and lives in Shebekino, the Belgorod Region.
6.  In March 1994 he signed a five-year serviceman contract with the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation. In January 1999 he applied for his discharge from military service on the grounds that his commander had failed to fulfil its contractual obligations, in particular to pay him certain allowances in due time. His application was refused.
7.  In October 1999 the applicant instituted judicial proceedings before the Tambov Garrison Military Court. By a judgment of 10 November 1999 the latter upheld his action and ordered his commander to discharge him from service, to pay the amounts that were due to him and “to solve the question of providing the applicant with housing in accordance with law prior to his discharge”.
8.  On 24 October 2002 the Tambov Housing Committee (Тамбовская КЭЧ) assigned to the applicant and his family (his wife and two sons) a flat in a newly built residence in Chicherina Street in Tambov (“the flat”).
9.  On 20 February 2003 the applicant was issued with an occupancy voucher (ордер на жилое помещение), a document that entitled him, his wife and their two sons to occupy and use the flat on the basis of a social tenancy agreement with the State.
10.  On an unspecified date he brought an action seeking “the suspension of the occupancy voucher”. He alleged that the building had not yet been registered and that this prevented him from disposing of the flat. Besides, there were certain construction defects that had to be fixed. On 26 May 2003 the Sovetskiy District Court of Tambov upheld his action.
11.  In November 2004 the applicant brought an action against the Tambov Housing Committee seeking ownership of the flat. By a judgment of 9 December 2004 the Oktyabriskiy District Court of Tambov granted joint title to the applicant and his two sons, whilst his wife waved her possibility to be granted title in respect of the flat.
12.  On 25 August 2000 the Bailiff Service of the Sovetskiy District of Tambov opened enforcement proceedings in respect of the judgment of 10 November 1999 (see paragraph 7 above).
13.  The proceedings were discontinued and resumed several times. On 25 December 2002 the Bailiff in charge issued a notice stating that the relevant domestic law prohibited the discharge of long-serving servicemen in need of housing if their commander had not provided them with such housing. In reply to an enquiry by the applicant of 30 June 2003 about measures taken in order to enforce the judgment of 10 November 1999, the Bailiff responded that his discharge from military service could not be executed because his commander had not yet provided him with housing.
14.  The applicant and his family moved into the flat on 1 November 2004.
15.  On 28 February 2005 the unit commander discharged the applicant from military service.
16.  On an unspecified date in 2005 the Prosecutor of the Tambov Garrison instituted proceedings against the applicant before the Tambov Garrison Military Court, seeking annulment of the occupancy voucher (see paragraph 9 above). The prosecutor submitted that the applicant had failed to inform his commander that his wife held joint title in respect of a flat in another town which she had obtained by way of a privatisation measure and that the concealment of this information had resulted in the applicant and his family having been provided with a larger accommodation than that to which they had been entitled.
17.  By a judgment of 18 August 2005 the Tambov Garrison Military Court upheld the prosecutor's revision request. The Military Court, referring to section 15 of the Federal Law on the Status of Servicemen and to a Ruling of 22 April 1999 by the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation (summarised below), observed that only those servicemen and members of their families who were “in need of better housing” were entitled to State accommodation. The Military Court found it established that the applicant's wife had indeed possessed housing, albeit in another town, and that he had omitted to inform the Housing Committee of this fact. The Military Court concluded that the applicant's wife had not qualified as a person “in need of better housing”, that the applicant could only have claimed housing rights in so far as concerned his own needs and those of his two sons. His concealment of the information important for the assessment of the “housing needs” of the members of his family constituted a sufficient ground under the relevant provisions of the Housing Code to invalidate the occupancy voucher of 20 February 2003.
18.  On 14 November 2005 the Garrison prosecutor brought further proceedings against the applicant. He sought to have the judgment of 9 December 2004 (see paragraph 11 above) set aside on the grounds of newly discovered circumstances: such circumstances formed the basis of the judgment of 18 August 2005 that had invalidated the occupancy voucher.
19.  On 13 December 2005 the Oktyabriskiy District Court examined the prosecutor's revision request. Considering that the invalidation of the occupancy voucher was a fact “essential for the dispute”, the District Court decided to re-open the proceedings (Article 392 of the Code of Civil Procedure) and quashed the judgment of 9 December 2004. The prosecutor and the representative of the Tambov Housing Committee attended the hearing and made their oral submissions. The applicant did not appear “for an unknown reason”.
20.  On 4 January 2005 the applicant filed his submissions in which he argued that the prosecutor had no standing to request revision and, with a view to a hearing that he thought was to be scheduled in future, asked the District Court to hear the prosecutor's revision request in his absence.
21.  On 15 February 2006, after having decided to re-open the proceedings on 13 December 2005, the District Court examined anew and dismissed the applicant's claim for ownership of the flat. It further ordered that the applicant and his family be evicted from the flat and that they should be offered their “previous accommodation” (an apartment in a council dormitory in Tambov, see paragraph 23 below). The District Court reached these conclusions on the sole ground that the applicant had obtained the occupancy voucher unlawfully. It did not answer his argument that, pursuant to the judgment of 10 November 1999, his commander was still obliged to provide him with housing in accordance with the law.
22.  On 14 June 2006, on an appeal by the applicant, the Tambov Regional Court upheld the judgment of 15 February 2006, endorsing in summary fashion the first-instance court's reasoning. The applicant received a summons for the appeal hearing on 14 June 2006, the day of the hearing. According to the date on the summons and postmarks on the envelope, it was issued on 1 June 2006, despatched by the court's registry on 2 June 2006 and arrived at the applicant's post office on 13 June 2006. Given the long distance between his town of residence at the time and Tambov, he was unable to attend the hearing. It appears from the Regional Court's judgment that the prosecutor had been present and had made his oral submissions to the court.
23.  On 27 November 2006, in accordance with the judgment of 15 February 2006, the applicant and his family were evicted from the flat that they occupied in Chicherina Street in Tambov.
24.  On 13 December 2006 the applicant was informed that an apartment in a council dormitory in Tambov – their previous accommodation – had been assigned to him and his family and that they could all move in. The applicant refused. Instead he asked his former commander to put him back on the list of servicemen in need of better housing. By a letter of 17 January 2007 the commander replied that there were no legal grounds for putting him back on that list because he had been discharged from the army.